January 25, 2026
3rd Sunday after the Epiphany – Mark S. Winward
“And Jesus said, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’”
Once upon a time, there was a group of people who called themselves fishermen. They lived in an area where there were many fish—waters all around them. In fact, the whole area was surrounded by streams and lakes and rivers just filled with fish. And the fish were hungry.
Week after week, month after month, year after year, these people who called themselves fishermen held meetings and talked about their call to be fishermen, the abundance of fish, and they passed along all the latest innovations in fishing. Year after year, they carefully defined what fishing was all about, defended fishing as a noble occupation, and declared that fishing is always the primary task of fishermen.
They constantly searched for new and better methods of fishing, and for new and better definitions of fishing. They loved such slogans as “Fishing is the task of every fisherman.” They sponsored special meetings known as “Fisherman’s Campaigns.” They went on nationwide and even worldwide tours to discuss fishing and promote fishing and hear about all the new developments and technological advances in fishing and new ways of presenting the bait to the fish that made it more attractive and alluring.
They built large, beautiful buildings called “Fishing Headquarters,” and selected some of their best fishermen to staff it.
January 18, 2026
2nd Sunday after the Epiphany – Mark S. Winward
Have you ever wondered what it really means to be “Church”? Not in the abstract, but in a way that gives weight to why we have gathered here this morning—why prayer, Scripture, sacrament, and fellowship matter at all. If the Church is merely a human institution, then what we do risks becoming little more than habit or sentiment. But if the Church is something God brings into being—something alive in Christ—then our gathering has eternal significance.
This morning’s Gospel from John takes us back to the very beginnings of the Church, before buildings, hierarchies, or denominational divisions. We see simple encounters: testimony, invitation, recognition, and response. John the Baptist points to Jesus. Andrew follows. Andrew brings Simon. And Jesus gives Simon a new name: Cephas—Peter, the rock.
That naming has echoed through Christian history. Peter’s new name signals stability, responsibility, and vocation. It points forward to the Church taking shape, stone by stone, through human lives called and transformed by Christ. Yet from this moment has also flowed deep disagreement about what the Church is meant to be and how it is to be held together.
Christians have long differed over whether Jesus intended, in naming Peter, to establish a concrete and enduring structure of authority in the world, or whether he was pointing more fundamentally to a spiritual reality that transcends any one institution. Roman Catholic theology sees in Peter’s naming the seed of a visible,
January 11, 2026
1st Sunday after the Epiphany – Mark S. Winward
Today is the First Sunday after Epiphany, the season of the Church Year that celebrates the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Appropriately, that ministry begins not with a sermon or a miracle, but with Jesus standing in the Jordan River, submitting to baptism by John. Yet for many people, today’s Gospel reading can be confusing. On the one hand, the surrounding verses in Matthew chapter 3, as well as the witness of the other Gospels, make it clear that John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, intended for the cleansing of sins. On the other hand, Scripture also clearly affirms that Jesus was without sin. As Paul writes, “For our sake God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, RSV). So what is going on here? Was Jesus submitting to something that did not apply to him? Were the Gospel writers—or Paul—simply confused? I want to suggest that three things are happening in Jesus’ baptism that help us understand not only his baptism, but our own.
First, Jesus’ baptism is proleptic. In Scripture, there are moments when one event foreshadows another. Scholars describe such passages as proleptic. Jesus’ baptism is a clear example of this. The Gospels tell the story of his baptism in a way that points beyond the Jordan River to his death at the end of the Gospel narrative.
January 6, 2025
Feast of the Epiphany – Mark S. Winward
There are a lot of popular misconceptions surrounding the wise men we celebrate this evening in the Christmas story. One of the most persistent is the assumption that they were kings. The biblical text, unlike our lovely opening hymn, never calls them kings. Matthew refers to them as magoi, or magi. While magi is often translated as “wise men,” there is no linguistic or historical basis for believing they were royalty. Rather, the magi were a caste of shamanic or priestly sages from Persia. Because they were experts in astrology and the interpretation of dreams, they were frequently sought out as advisors to pagan kings, but that does not make them kings themselves.
Another widespread assumption concerns the number of wise men. Scripture makes no reference at all to how many people were in their traveling entourage. The gospel tells us only that three gifts were presented to the Christ child. Over time, the church assumed that each visitor would have brought a gift, and since three gifts are listed, there must have been three wise men. In fact, the Eastern Church traditionally held that as many as nine wise men visited Jesus. The reality is that no one knows how many magi made the journey.
A third misconception is that the wise men visited Jesus in the manger on the night of his birth. Matthew’s account tells us that the star “went before them,